Prema Rasa Siddhanta, 9

Monday, September 23, 2019

Take a bottle and fill it with urine. Then close the bottle tightly and immerse it in the waters of the Ganges. After twenty-four hours, take the bottle out of the river and drink its contents. Will anyone drink it? No one will drink. Why not? Millions of people drink the water of this holy river. Your answer will be that because the bottle was sealed it still contains urine, and not the water of the Ganges. This is exactly what happens when you bathe in the Ganges. In which part of the body do your sins reside? They are all in the mind, aren’t they? When you bathed in the Ganges, your mind was elsewhere. It was only your body that bathed. How then could those sins that were in your mind be washed away?

The scriptures proclaim that if the mind unites with a pure entity, it becomes purified. Had your mind been attached to the holy Ganges – which is actually a divine power – then it would definitely have been cleansed. This obviously implies that it is absolutely impossible to attain freedom from material bondage through karma that is devoid of devotion. vari mathe baru . . . yaha siddhanta apela (Ramayana) “The impossible may become possible, but there can be no liberation without devotion to God." . . .

The conclusion is that the scriptures recommend practice of karmayoga, which means constant attachment of the mind to God along with physical performance of scriptural duties. If the mind is attached anywhere else apart from God, then it cannot be called karmayoga. Karmayoga is possible only when the mind is constantly attached to God without even a moment’s separation from Him.